Christy Mahon climbs the 13,950-foot Pacific Peak in April 2013, with Atlantic Peak and Quandary Peak in the background. The Aspen ski mountaineer joins her huband Ted and professional skier Chris Davenport in a mission to ski the state’s 100 highest peaks. (Courtesy of Ted Mahon)

Aspen ski mountaineers Chris Davenport, Ted Mahon and Christy Mahon on Wednesday are planning to climb and ski the remote Jagged Peak in southwestern Colorado, a feat that will carve their names into the most hallowed halls of U.S. ski mountaineering.

The Mahons and Davenport are among a handful of skiers who have climbed and skied all 54 of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks. Christy became the first woman to ever ski the state’s highest peaks in 2010. The friends and longtime ski partners forged their Centennial Peaks project after notching all the fourteeners, aiming for the 47 highest thirteeners in the state, casting a first-ever mountaineering trophy for Colorado’s Centennial Peaks, the state’s highest 100 mountains.

Last week the trio labored up the 13,983-foot Stewart Peak north of Creede, a brutal slog that included 17 miles of mountain biking up muddy trails just to get to the snow. That was their 99th peak of a 100-peak mission.

On Tuesday, they returned to Silverton and hopped on the train with a singular goal: Jagged. By late afternoon Davenport sent a message that the team had reached a high camp near the summit of Jagged.

It’s likely the most demanding peak of the entire project, not just because it’s miles from any road. Jagged is harrowingly steep and technical, with a thin thread of snow snaking between its labyrinth of spires. It’s unlikely — but no one knows for sure — that Jagged has ever been skied before.

It has been tried. Last spring, the Mahons and Davenport were thwarted in the Weminuche after snow and wind derailed an audacious five-day push to climb and ski five of the state’s most remote peaks in the 500,000 acre wilderness. They did ski two of the peaks – Jupiter Mountain and Vestal Peak – despite gale-force winds. Earlier this month, the Mahons and Davenport returned to the Weminuche — via the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad — with their eyes on the 13,972-foot Pigeon Peak and the 13,835-foot Turret Peak, opting for a multi-day bushwhack.

The team ––again with Ian Fohrman, the writer-adventurer who has skied more than a dozen of the Centennial Peaks with the Mahons and Davenport — earned the technical peaks after a grueling ascent and avalanche-dodging descent.

For those of us following the Mahons and Davenport, the Centennial Peaks ski project has been like following a three-year Super Bowl. We watch every video and read every trip report. We wait for updates, constantly checking websites for the latest ping from their DeLorme devices. We lament their struggles. We celebrate their wins. And this is their final push.

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